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If you are a human being in the United States born sometime before the new millennium, you've probably heard of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For a time, it was impossible to escape the merchandising juggernaut of these four green brothers, and it nearly killed the franchise. After three feature films, a slipshod cartoon and a seemingly never-ending assortment of tchotchkes, what used to be a genuinely cool indie comic was nearly crushed under the weight of its own rapacious licensing. It's been a full 20 years since the abysmal animated series was first broadcast and the Turtles are attempting a comeback, but imagine my surprise (and fanboyish glee) when I discovered that TMNT (the inauspicious title of their latest game) is actually quite fun.

Ninja Magic

Fans of the original Eastman and Laird comic series shouldn't be shocked to discover that the Turtles are still cool (or maybe they should after the last two decades of cheap child-pandering knock offs), because at their core they have always been inherently awesome. The re-imagining of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in TMNT hews a little closer to their darkly heroic comic origins, eschewing the manic pizza-devouring numbskulls they had become. Granted, it still doesn't tell the original story of the Turtles, but at least they get the solitary stoicism of Leonardo and the envy and mental instability of Raphael right.

TMNT is first and foremost a platformer, containing all of the elements that you'd expect from a game of its type. Most of your time will be spent leaping, hopping, flipping and at least seven other words for "jumping" through a stream of precarious perches, platforms and other obstacles. From the steamy verdant jungles of South America to the rugged dingy back alleys of New York, the Turtles attack every environment as though they were some crazy hybridization of Tomb Raider's Lara Croft and a pack of Red Bull-injected spider monkeys. As ninjas, the four brothers are superb acrobats, and I found it both liberating and exhilarating to wall-run along the sides of high-rise buildings.

Still, there's another thing that ninjas do that TMNT seems to skimp on a bit: combat. While each of the brothers comes equipped with their trademark weapons (and corresponding special moves), actual fighting is confined mostly to the mashing of the attack button. You could execute a spinning roundhouse kick, but it doesn't do as much damage as a straight-up attack, so its use is limited to knocking enemies so that you have room to pull off a charge-attack. The charge-attacks are where combat becomes most interesting; you can do one by holding down the attack button for a few seconds and upon releasing it quickly dash from enemy to enemy dishing out damage to vital organs. With the mere handful of damaging abilities at your disposal, combat is a little lacking for a game about ninjas (let alone mutant ninjas).